Thai Horse

their feet.

‘My trip,’ Hatcher said and walked uncertainly across the first hang yao and past a muscular Thai, who stared at his chest as he passed but did not look at his face. He scrambled aboard the second boat as a young girl, no more than sixteen, came from under the thatched hooch at the rear. Lowering her head slightly, she stared at him over her nose. Her eyes got dusky brown. She had it down to a science.

‘Sukhaii?’ Hatcher asked.

‘You know my name?’ she said, surprised.

Hatcher nodded. ‘Chai,’ he said.

‘You want do some sanuk?’ she asked in shattered English. She pulled him close and rubbed against him, still smiling. She was warm and soft to the touch and had a sprig of jasmine behind her ear. For a moment Hatcher thought about having little sanuk with her. He gently took her by the arm so she wouldn’t bolt and held up an American fifty-dollar bill.

‘I am not here for fun,’ he said in Thai.

The girl look startled and tried to pull away from him.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘fifty dollars American. That’s one thousand bahts, two purples. You want this?’

The girl stared at the fifty and Hatcher dropped her arm.

The muscular Thai in the other boat stared casually across the deck at them but said thing.

‘What for?’ she asked cautiously.

‘There was a man here the other night when the killing occurred in the next boat. He jumped overboard.’

‘Chai. .

‘What did he look like?’

The girl thought for a moment and held her hand out, about five and half feet above the deck.

‘This tall. Very brown eyes. Black hair. Thin face. About like you heavy.’

‘Built like me but shorter?’

‘Chai.’

‘Any scars — uh, marks on his face or body?’

Sukhaii’s eyebrows rose. ‘Ah chai, chai . . . he has dragon. Here.’

She laid her hand on her chest

‘A tattoo of a dragon?’

She nodded.

‘Now, this guy, he was in a big hurry, yes?’

She nodded her head vigorously. ‘He was afraid.’ ‘I’m sure. Now, the way I see it, he didn’t have time to get dressed before he went swimming,’ Hatcher whispered.

She looked at him suspiciously but did not answer.

‘He probably didn’t take his clothes with him—’

‘Chai, chai, took clothes—’

‘Mai,’ Hatcher said, shaking his head. ‘No time.’

‘I told police—’

‘I am not the police. I don’t care .what you told the police. And I do not tell the police anything.’

‘I tell police everything,’ she said defiantly.

‘I think perhaps he may have left his pants behind—’

She shook her head frantically.. ‘Mai, mai. No wallet.’

‘I didn’t say anything about a wallet,’ Hatcher said softly.

The young girl was beginning to panic. She looked past Hatcher at the Thai on the other boat.

‘Look here, I’m not from the police, I am Amehricaan,’ Hatcher said. ‘All I want are the ID papers that were in the wallet. I don’t care about anything else, you can keep the money or anything else of value. I just want the papers, understand?’

Her eyes shifted behind him again. He turned. The Thai stood near the port side of the boat but did not come aboard. He was dressed in a purple pakoma, a kind of man’s sarong-pants and a white cotton tank shirt. There was a large tattoo of an orchid with a snake entwined around it on his right forearm. He smiled briefly at Hatcher and then looked at the girl.

‘What does he want?’ the man asked Sukhaii in Thai.

Hatcher interjected. ‘I was offering the young woman fifty American dollars for the identification papers in a wallet left here the other night. No questions asked. I’ll forget I was ever here, okay? No police. It is personal. All I want are the papers.’

The Thai came aboard and walked close to Hatcher. He was two or three inches shorter— but his body was